Ring Cairn

Miscellaneous

Frances Lynch in A Guide to Ancient and Historic Wales: Gwynedd gives the following:
"It is a ring cairn, similar in design to the upper circle but with taller stones set at regular intervals on the inner edge of its low stone bank. Four of these stones have been missing since the 17th century, so new ones were placed in the original stone-holes when the monument was excavated and restored in 1979. These added stones have been marked with a deep T cut into the back.
The interior has been levelled into the slope and several pits had been dug before it was covered with a thin layer of stones (only surviving in the northern quarter). Some of the pits had been dug close to the inner edge of the bank, others were in the centre of the ring. The pits contained various deposits - charcoal alone, charcoal with scraps of burnt human bone, and burnt bone alone, the product of a 'normal' cremation burial. In one case the scraps of bone had been previously buried near the coast (to judge by the soil around them) and had been reburied up here. Some of the bone and charcoal was in pots typical of the early Bronze Age, some just poured directly into the pits.
This evidence indicates that a variety of activities had taken place within the circle. Some of them are matched at other ring cairns in the region; others - the reburial of bone for instance - were unknown before this excavation, but have since been recorded in south Wales. There was evidence to show that the various pits had been dug at different times, and radiocarbon dates suggest that the circle was in use between 1700 and 1400 BC."